The Dead and the Dark(46)

It was the color of blood.

“Logan,” Ashley said tentatively.

Her voice echoed back in the wind. She swung her flashlight back over the darkness behind her, and Logan shielded her eyes, face washed in the ThermoGeist’s red.

“I’ve never seen it do that before.”

They followed the light to the back of the cemetery. Ashley’s hands shook, but she kept her grip on the ThermoGeist. It was as though Tristan stood directly behind her—she heard his breath, felt his hand hovering just above her shoulder. The truth was in front of her now, if she could just be brave enough to see it.

Ashley’s jaw clenched. “What do you want me to do?”

“What?” Logan asked, before realizing that she meant Tristan. Logan showed Ashley the Scripto8G. “It says DIRT.”

Ashley’s breath caught in her chest. She could almost see him now, squatting in front of her, brushing his hand along the crumbling dirt. She could almost see his eyes, begging her to just do this one thing. She understood, but it was too much to ask. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and shook her head.

“I can’t…”

“You can’t what?” Logan asked.

Please, a voice groaned, carried along by the wind.

Logan’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. I heard that.”

This voice wasn’t Tristan’s. Logan’s face said she recognized it, too. The voice was intensely familiar, but distorted as though the speaker stood miles away. Ashley had heard this voice, soft and bashful from the back seat of her truck.

It was Nick Porter’s.

“Okay, okay…” Ashley breathed. She turned to Logan. “Can you help me dig?”

Logan stared at the dirt and her face drained of color. She shook her head, fist clutched to her chest. Even in the dark, Ashley recognized the fear in her eyes. Her pupils were shrunken, ragged breath fogging from her lips. She whispered, “I can’t.”

“Then call Paris.”

Ashley fell to her knees and pressed her quivering fingers to the dirt. Her heart hammered and hammered, but she swept at the dirt anyway. She tucked her phone under her chin so it could soak the ground in white light. The night smelled like fear and the metallic scent of impending rain. She dug until her fingers brushed against something solid. And then Ashley’s heart stopped. She pushed away a layer of dirt and there, beneath the earth, her fingers met skin as cold as stone. The skin was too human to have been buried long, and too close to the surface to have been buried right. She bit back a sob and kept brushing at the dirt until it gave way to the ridges of human knuckles. She stumbled back and collapsed in the dirt.

She’d wanted to find one of the missing kids alive.

Instead, she’d found a body.





19


The Body But Not The Soul


After the cemetery everything was a strange dream.

It was a dream with claws. A sweltering blur. A nightmare rippling over Snakebite in slow, aching waves. Windows were shut, blinds drawn, children ushered inside on hot afternoons when they would usually play in the lake. News about the body wasn’t like the usual gossip—it wasn’t discussed over coffee at the Moontide. This was the kind of thing that snatched the words from people’s tongues. There was a killer on the loose. Snakebite was blanketed in a coat of silence, because now it was all real.

Nick Porter was dead.

Not missing, dead.

For the last two weeks, Ashley had been silent, too. The Owyhee County police had dug up one body in Pioneer Cemetery; Ashley had expected them to find two. More than ever, Snakebite was sure the Ortiz-Woodleys had something to do with it. Ashley wasn’t sure. Tristan was still missing, which was as terrifying as it was hopeful. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t home, either.

Ashley didn’t know how to feel. Mostly, she felt empty.

Nick was dead, Tristan was gone, and she still knew nothing.

It’d been two weeks since she’d spoken to Logan. Two weeks since their whole world had been turned inside out. She wasn’t avoiding Logan—at least, not any more than she was avoiding everyone else—but something about reaching out scared her. If they kept looking, it meant everything they’d already found was real. It meant Snakebite could never go back to the way it had been.

More than anyone else, though, she’d wanted to text. To call. She wanted to drive out with Logan and keep looking. Ashley wasn’t sure what to do with that.

The call came in while she lay on her bed, head hanging over the side, blond hair draped across the floor. Ashley stared at Logan’s name a moment too long, then picked up.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” Logan’s voice was hoarse. After a moment, she cleared her throat. “How’re you doing after … yeah, how’re you doing?”

“I don’t know.”

For a moment, the line was quiet. “I was gonna text you, but it’s been weird. Obviously. But … I think we should keep going. If you still want to.”

“You wanna go back to the cabin?” Ashley asked.

“I do. I don’t know. I feel like…”

“… like we didn’t find everything yet,” Ashley finished. Her chest was tight with the need to know more. “Same.”

Whatever fear sat in her, whatever was waiting for them, Logan was right. There was more to find.